A wire harness, which is constituted by high-voltage electrical power lines and routed between devices of a hybrid car or an electric car, such as between a battery and an inverter, or the inverter and a motor, is often routed under floor on the lower surface of a floor panel of the car. This wire harness to be routed under floor needs to be waterproof and protected and shielded from flying stones or the like, and therefore a group of electric cables constituting the wire harness is inserted into an armoring material constituted by, for example, a metal pipe and the metal pipe is arranged and fixed on the lower surface of the floor panel (see, for example, JP2010-215010A).
Although there is a case where both end portions of the wire harness inserted into the metal pipe are drawn out from the metal pipe and directly connected to connection counterpart devices, in many cases generally, the end portions of the wire harness are inserted into flexible armoring materials, such as corrugated tubes, that are connected to terminals of the metal pipe, and are routed to the connection counterpart devices arranged in an engine compartment and a rear portion of the vehicle interior.
A grommet 111 as shown in, for example, FIGS. 3(A) and 3(B) is attached to a terminal of a wire harness 100 to be connected to a connection counterpart device, in order to waterproof the terminal of the wire harness.
Specifically, a front end side of a tubular braided shielding member 101, which covers the wire harness 100 constituted by a plurality of high-voltage electrical power lines W, is overlaid on a tubular part 116 of a metallic shield shell 115 that is to be attached to a case of a connection counterpart device 120, and is fixed by crimping with a first crimp ring 113. Then a large diameter tubular part 111a, which is on one end side of the grommet 111, is externally fitted to the tubular part 116 of the shield shell 115 so as to cover the section of the tubular braided shielding member 101 that is fixed by crimping, and the outer periphery of the large diameter tubular part 111a on the front end side is fixed by crimping with a second crimp ring 114. Also, a small diameter tubular part 111b, which is on the other end side of the grommet 111, is externally fitted to a terminal of an armoring material 110 such as a corrugated tube from which the wire harness 100 is drawn out, and is tightly fixed by winding a tape (T) or the like.
Because the tubular part 116 of the shield shell 115 often has a generally ellipsoidal or oval shape in cross-section, it is difficult to apply an uniform pressure even when the large diameter tubular part 111a of the grommet 111 overlaid on the tubular part 116 is fixed by crimping with the second crimp ring 114, thus hardly improving the sealing performance. Accordingly, as shown in FIG. 3(B), a plurality of annular lips 112 protrude from the inner periphery of the large diameter tubular part 111 a beneath the second crimp ring 114, and the lips 112 are configured to be pressed against the outer periphery of the tubular part 116 of the shield shell 115, thereby, together with the fixation of the large diameter tubular part 111a by crimping with the second crimp ring 114, achieving an improved sealing performance.